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ready for takeoff
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all right so we're going to close out today uh in the conference with a panel
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of Ruby Central board members primarily um and Neil McGovern our executive
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director do you want to introduce yourselves and I'll just get off the stage
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yeah so uh thanks everybody for being here today to start off can you give uh
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your name title and a little background of how he came to be involved in Ruby Central
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sure yeah hi uh my name's Neil McGovern I'm the executive director of Ruby
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Central and so that's kind of how I've come along to be here um I started about a month ago so it's
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been fantastic to uh meet everyone from the community and kind of really start to get to know people
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hi my name is Chelsea Kaufman I am new to the board I've been on the board for
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just about two months now but I've been involved in the Ruby Community for a
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long time I actually launched my company in 2014 at Ruby Comp San Diego uh and
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then have been really involved in the San Diego Ruby community and was really excited to kind of take that community
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building and my education and non-profit experience onto the board and really help the community grow so that's why
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I'm here hello um I'm Allison McMillan I'm a VP of
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engineering at a company called quota path and I am currently the board president
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um I have been on the board I always lose track of how many years three ish somewhere around there
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um and I got involved in the Ruby Central board my first Ruby comp was as
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a scholar um in I think Miami and it was just a
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really incredible experience I did a lightning talk and just as I was
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learning to code the I feel like I owe everything to the community I had such
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amazing Community Support mentors folks that were guiding me encouraging me
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um Etc and so after being a scholar and being involved in the community for a little while I got involved in helping
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to plan the scholar guides program um and then from there handful of your years ago when they were expanding the
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Ruby Central board they approached me and I was more than happy to be a part
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of the board and and give back to this wonderful Community what you all gave to me
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hi um Marty hot um director of engineering and hashicorp I am the board treasurer
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I joined in 2012 as a board member and prior to that
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I got into sort of the Ruby community in 2006
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and start up the boulder Ruby users group it was called a user group back then and I think we called a Meetup now
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but um and I started organizing conferences in 2007 co-organizing Mountain West with Mike
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Moore and then starting my own conference in 2010 and in Boulder called Rocky Mountain Ruby and so then I joined
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in 2012 I brought that experience of event organizing to uh Ruby Central and
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helped sort of shape how our events moved forward from that year on
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great thank you and so the most visible thing that Ruby Central does is plain
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run conferences such as the one you're all attending right now uh but what are
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some of the other things that the nonprofit is responsible for sure yeah I can start off with this um
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so yeah obviously we have uh rubyconf and railsconf but um we are we are a non-profit as well so
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we exist as a uh wonderful bit of tax code is a 501c3 in the US which means
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we're a publicly supported charitable uh non-profit so we have to have a bigger
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aim than just put on some conferences we're really here to support the community around here and to make sure
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that um everyone um has a a really good experience with um not just at the conference but Ruby
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more General so as an example of some of the things we've we've do recently we host
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rubygems.org and various other sponsorship and scholarship programs that have been run around and there's
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um I think we're going to see over the next year or so some expansion of those and hopefully we'll be able to talk a bit more openly about the other things
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we do which isn't just the conferences and can you give us an overview of the
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history of Ruby Central and how it works now uh yes
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so Marie Central was formed in 2001 uh when the first rubyconf was organized in
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Tampa Florida I think there's around 30 people that attended that conference you
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can actually find the I saw on the and the stream under the hashtag that they semi had found a link to the home page
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on the Wayback machine and it's pretty pretty great to read up on that so the organization was formed to uh basically
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to organize the conferences and shortly after that I think it was in 2004
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um oh I should say that that there were three founding board members that founded Ruby Central uh that's David
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black that's rich Kilmer and Chad Fowler and they all served on the board and
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essentially took uh Ruby Central from what it started to um until they started to roll off the
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board in 2011. so I'll go back and one of the things that was interesting uh for rubyconf early on was it was very
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much like a hackers conference where you just came together and you collaborated and is much smaller and very intimate
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and Ruby gyms was born out of of Ruby conf in 2004 and uh before that point
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there really wasn't a way you could package your Ruby code there was disagreement on how that worked and so
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ruby gems was created to make that possible and so one of the things that Ruby Central did from that point forward
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is they made it so that you could run a gym command anywhere and it would actually execute and work and there was
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this sort of repository of gems that you could could leverage and so that was something that was very important that
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the organization did behind the scenes and we still to this day uh pay for all the infrastructure that supports ruby
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gems and all those commands um around so we got involved uh with uh
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starting uh railsconf because it became so much demand once rails came along to have a second conference because there's
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only one conference originally but it started selling out and and people couldn't get tickets to rubyconf because
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there was just so much demand and so we formed up another conference in 2006 uh railsconf O'Reilly stepped in and
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started helping us run that conference for a while because that at that point Ruby Central wasn't
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um they did just enough to get the event going things were very chill these events were very different than they are
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these days and so railsconf demanded a lot more because a lot more people wanted to come and so O'Reilly helped
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make that happen um after some period of years uh the
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founding board members uh basically after 10 years they were tired and ready to move on to things and so there was a
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second wave of board members that that took over those those three spots uh Evan Phoenix Finn Schofield and myself
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was that second wave of directors directors that joined in 2011 to 2012 and the three of us
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um or you know were the directors for quite some time Ben stepped down Sarah May stepped up in his place and um that
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we went that for quite a while until 2019 we expanded the board to have six
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members uh Allison was one of the members that joined that time and the um
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it was just necessary because this is a lot to do and for many years um uh Evan myself and Sarah and Abby who
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was our executive administrator who did a lot of the behind the scenes work and Heather one of our event producers we
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had our hands full running these events and we couldn't really do a lot more with that so I think at that point I
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don't know if someone else wants to talk about like what happened after 2019 yeah I can talk although it was 2019 so
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many of us know what happened in 2020. um yeah so so you know 2019 uh we sort
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of came together as a larger board and started to think about um you know given where Ruby and the
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community is at that point what more do we want to do what more can we do how
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can we really um support the the growth of the
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community all over the world of the programming language Etc so um we had lots of good ideas and we can
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talk about some of those a little later but unfortunately then uh then covet hit which also helped us realize that all of
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our Revenue came from in-person conferences um and so I think you know the last few
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years we've been looking at both um how we can continue to make sure that
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we support the community and that you know we're supporting the initiatives that we originally had
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um as well as you know experimenting with a whole bunch of different formats you know we've done uh
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virtual conferences in-person conferences in-person conferences with a with a home conf live streamed all sorts
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of different um different approaches uh over the last years and we are excited now to be in a
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place with um with Neil on board um with um you know just where we are with covid
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and just the experimenting that we've done in the last few years that we can I think finally start to look forward again and focus on those really exciting
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ideas that we originally started to talk about in 2019.
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hmm there's me a question and so Ruby
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Central merged with Ruby together uh last year what does that merger mean for the
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organization and for the Ruby community and probably if someone can give out one sentence explainer of what ruby together
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is yeah I think I can start with that one um Ruby together uh it was a
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um membership-based organization that focused uh mostly on supporting
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um open source uh and um the the Ruby Community but sort of
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more through um development pain developers to to work on gems to work on things like
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bundler like things that we all rely on every every day within the infrastructure
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um the Ruby together merger was really awesome we sort of came together and
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you know basically start talking about how we are one community and while each
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of the two organizations had slightly separate missions our ultimate goals
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were were really the same and we realized was that it sort of was confusing for the community right they
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support you know Ruby together sponsor Ruby together Ruby Central and we sort
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of really came together and talked about um in what ways we could and should work
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uh work closer um so that we said it's not so confusing for the communities that we're creating
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one central place um for folks to really uh look to be
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able to provide feedback too right part of what we do is we support all of you so we get all of our you know ideas and
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things we should be doing from the community um and so instead of having that sort of in multiple places really uh bringing it
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together and so I think that the merger was really incredible in terms of looking at what does what do each of the
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two organizations do best and how can we sort of bring that Under One Roof
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and there's been some discussion around this conference and in the community
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generally around diversity equity and inclusion work what are your thoughts on
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that topic and Ruby Central's role in it
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um I thought you know listening to George's talk the other day uh really
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opened my eyes to the way that we as a community can come together around
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um our message and our languages what ruby Central can do when it comes to
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these conferences that we have the opportunity to set the example to show the community that we're going to
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celebrate all walks of life by making sure that our speakers and our staff and
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like everything that we can that we find diversity in that and that we're lifting up the folks in our community and
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helping you all find a voice as a part of as a part of this together so I think
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our hope is that Ruby Central can can be a voice for that we can be a place where
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people can come together it can be a safe space which I love that George
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talked about that in in his talk that they felt very safe talking to all of us
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about these topics and that made me feel really good about what ruby Central can
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do to really support all the different types of communities and we're talking
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about lots of different ways that we can really expand and open doors for more
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people to get involved because it's kind of a two-stage process we need to celebrate everyone who's here and lift
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up everyone that we can but also make sure that we're opening doors so that more folks can come in and so we've been
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having lots of conversations about how Ruby Central um in in the scholars and guides in our
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cfp process and things like that that can really just give more opportunity for even more people to be involved and
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give them a voice and give them a stage to talk about their own experiences and
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their own Journey yeah and I for me it's it's essential right this this is
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absolute table Stakes this is what we have to put in place George was saying that he just wants to be able to wash
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his hands using automatic washers it's by not having those views in the room
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we're doing ourselves a disservice by not creating the best products the best the best software and and the best
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things that we can and that's what we want to do as software engineers and and
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people designing things we want to make things that are good and people can use and are the best they can be and without
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getting diverse voices in the room and making sure that we have things in place
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to make those people feel safe and want to come into the room we're doing a disservice to ourselves and to our
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entire community I think one thing that's really interesting to kind of point out is that
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Ruby Central has actually been doing this work for a long time I want to say
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as probably 2013 when we had a discussion about the fact that we want
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to improve diversity not because it was the popular thing that we're supposed to do but because we we valued it
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intrinsically and so we made sure our cfp app had a blind process so that we
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were removing bias as much as possible we're trying to make the the event as welcoming as possible I think if you I
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think many of you if not all of you have experienced it there's a different vibe at this conference that's not accidental
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that's been intentional and that's been that way for a long long time uh there's uh the the phrase minus one mats is nice
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so we are nice and that's been something that the community has had from the beginning or before I joined and so you
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know as a as an organizing group as a board we have intentionally done things
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over the years to make that better you know there you know many years ago there was a discussion of wow should events
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have a code of conduct and we were very you know early on and yes indeed we
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should we should make it very clear very explicit there is a code of conduct and we take it seriously and so we've done
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that work over the years and we continue that work we think about you know what does representation look like on stage
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what are our keynote speaker composition look like and all that so that's something we have been doing and we will
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continue to do and so this is not just we jumped on some bandwagon in the last year or two because you know that's what
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we should be doing and I'll just call out the obvious that looking at the stage right now we
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obviously have more work to do and what do you think is the most
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important thing for people to know about Ruby Central
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uh I'll go first I we try really hard
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um you know these are uh for board members they're they're volunteer roles
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um I don't know we try really we try really hard we have a lot of uh long
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in-depth conversations um we you know are always open talking to community members
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um I know this isn't about Ruby Central for saving maybe about us but we try really hard maybe to Echo Susan's talk
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from the other day it is complex just to add to that and to
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kind of dive into the the non-profit structure is that the the organization
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is here for the community it belongs to you and that we are here as the I don't
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know Arbiters of that and so to to me the thing that I would like all of you
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to know is that you have a voice in what ruby Central uh is for this community
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and so having the conversations for those of us that are up here uh having
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you know conversations in the hallway come and talk to us afterwards telling us your thoughts whether they're good or
00:19:06.600
bad or or in the middle or any of those things like we want to work through these problems and and celebrate the
00:19:14.100
successes with all of you because that's what it that's what the organization and
00:19:19.620
what a non-profit should truly be that it is for the community so if we are not
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representing you and if we are not if Ruby Central is not performing the way
00:19:30.360
they that that's what you're expecting then we want to talk about that we want to work through that and be the
00:19:36.059
organization for the rubius in this room to celebrate you to support you to help
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you in your careers whatever stage that is and that we're you know a small and
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mighty team trying to do lots of things and really have a we are all very
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passionate about what we do and why we are here and I couldn't you know we
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couldn't do it without all of you in the room and that your voices really matter to to us and to the future of Ruby
00:20:09.480
Central so that to me that knowing that you are a part of it you are Ruby
00:20:14.760
Central as much as we are yeah I think there's um one thing I want
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to highlight is that and Allison touched on it a bit is that you know we are a volunteer board
00:20:27.059
um I have a full-time job I have a family I have a lot of things that I have to do and for many many years what
00:20:32.940
we did was pretty much good enough or like we were like this is the amount of time and space we had to do whatever it
00:20:39.539
is and there's a lot of things that sure we would have loved to have done more over the years but like Evan and I only
00:20:45.299
had so many cycles to do stuff so it's kind of like that's not happening because you know we we don't have more
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time to do more and I think what's really interesting now and this is a decision that we made back in 2019 I was
00:21:00.059
like Evan like this is not sustainable you and I are going to burn ourselves out if we don't expand and sort of
00:21:06.240
mature the organization and you know I think in some ways we weren't like a real non-profit before that we were just
00:21:13.140
Scrappy like a little startup and like the last three three and a half years or
00:21:19.020
so has been this maturation process where like let's grow up let's be a real bored let's expand let's make this
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sustainable let's you know uh be more intentional about the things we can do Beyond rubyconf and railsconf just to
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add to that um because you're right Marty that weed would not be here today without all the
00:21:39.720
work that all of you put in and the culture that you built in this community and then that gave us the foundation
00:21:46.620
that we now can grow we can get you know do more things we can create a larger
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Community you know we've bringing on staff and creating that next stage of
00:21:58.380
the organization we've talked a lot about feeling like the organization is growing up and you know I bet a lot of
00:22:04.740
you uh have been in maybe organizations that are going through those like organizational growth and there's some
00:22:12.480
Growing Pains along the way and you know I think that one of the things to know
00:22:18.240
is that we are going through a transition the organization is currently going through a transition and I think
00:22:24.059
that's an important thing to talk about so that you all know the the stage that we're at and that you know we we might
00:22:31.620
make some mistakes and that that's okay and that we are here to have those conversations so that we can work
00:22:37.860
through those and and learn from them and just get better along the way but I I am really excited because you built
00:22:44.520
such an amazing foundation and it's such a great community that you have people
00:22:50.700
that are coming back for years and years and years that we get to build on that
00:22:55.860
and that that's really cool and we have a submitted question thank
00:23:02.520
you people who submitted questions uh regarding lack of presence in Europe why
00:23:07.919
do Ruby and rails comps always have to be in the U.S uh why don't we have a dedicated official Ruby related
00:23:14.520
conference in Europe okay so one of the 2019 ideas that we
00:23:22.080
talked about was we this was one of the things we pinpointed that we do just a miserable job of really connecting to
00:23:28.500
the Ruby Community outside of the U.S um we talked about a variety idea of ideas like maybe having like a committee
00:23:35.460
of advisors from um you know around the world that has sort of a board member who's a point
00:23:41.520
person so that we make sure that we're serving those communities um in terms of conferences and why those
00:23:47.340
haven't happened overseas uh it was really sort of just like a bandwidth Logistics like with you know the small
00:23:55.260
staff and or that we had all U.S based there was a lot more to to figure out
00:24:01.320
when looking to move overseas and um you know at that point the board was just three individuals and so it was
00:24:07.860
felt like a really heavy lift to sort of think about that but that was definitely one of the 2019 ideas and one of the
00:24:13.799
things that again as we look to the Future that we are looking to you know how to we become significantly less U.S
00:24:21.240
Centric and U.S focused and how do we really make sure that we're including I mean there are amazing rubies there have
00:24:27.539
been amazing Ruby conferences all over the world for years and how do we make sure that we are including them in Ruby
00:24:35.039
Central because Ruby Central is not just the U.S Ruby representation it really you know we want to represent Rubios
00:24:42.539
worldwide yeah I think a little I want to point out a capital history lesson thing here is that like 15 years ago
00:24:49.700
there was a plethora of conferences around the world and in the US tons of
00:24:55.320
regional conferences so many that we had a calendar that we maintained and Ruby
00:25:01.140
Central promised not to trample on any Regional dates because we would put our dates in this secret calendar so they
00:25:07.679
would know okay cool rubyconvice here railsconf is there we won't schedule near that because that would hurt our attendance and so many many years ago 15
00:25:15.120
or 10 years ago such there were a lot our conferences and slowly they sort of faded away and so now we're like well we
00:25:22.740
probably should revisit that you know like we feel bad that there aren't more in Europe so yeah I think in my second week in the
00:25:29.880
job I had a call with the organizers of euroko um in Latvia as well they're very keen
00:25:35.340
to work with us as well and for us to do more promotion and do things like that um one thing I'd be cautious of is
00:25:43.620
making sure that basically we don't turn up and just go right we're now doing your Rubicon for Europe and eurocode
00:25:50.520
yeah okay you've done a great job for like 15 years but you can go away now or something we need to actually work with the organizations and with the
00:25:57.000
communities that are in place and then just from a very boring logistical point of view I don't know if I'm based in the
00:26:03.179
UK and I don't know if there's any quite a few other Europeans around I know I've seen some yeah you have to deal with that and just
00:26:11.340
dealing with that is a whole Nightmare on its own so yeah there's that there's
00:26:16.740
that thing but if it does make sense then yeah that's something we would want to do also got a call coming up with
00:26:21.840
Ruby Camp Australia as well and there's community in Indonesia as well and I I
00:26:27.720
think it's um something that we as an organization as Ruby Central should be doing we should be helping to
00:26:34.919
um communities from around the globe because if we don't then I'm not sure who else will
00:26:42.659
thank you and another submitted question what is the easiest and hardest thing
00:26:48.240
about putting together these conferences
00:26:57.659
okay so this is maybe both the easiest and the hardest thing
00:27:03.240
um but there's a bunch of stuff that's similar conference to conference but who the
00:27:09.600
um two co-organizers are of each Conference changes each time and it
00:27:16.440
really is up to the co-organizers to like they sort of get to decide the the vibe of the conference and if you look
00:27:24.059
at schedules over the years or different sorts of like things that are you know
00:27:29.159
added or have been in some conferences not in other conferences
00:27:34.200
um you know it's it's because the the co-organizer sort of get to decide a little bit of that like special sauce
00:27:40.500
and a little bit of that Vibe um and that's both the easiest and hardest because I think when when people
00:27:47.940
decide to be co-organizers they sort of they have the idea of of what they want
00:27:53.460
the vibe to be what they feel like either has been missing or they want to enhance or they want to do and so that's the easy part but then actually figuring
00:28:00.000
out like okay and how do we do this in a way that makes sense in a way that
00:28:06.419
um just like all the it comes down to like all the details of actually executing on that I think that part is
00:28:12.419
hard I guess one of the easiest things is
00:28:18.059
that we don't have the problem of like will people show up perhaps like given
00:28:25.919
today's conference um with covid and some other things going on the numbers this is this is a
00:28:31.559
dramatically smaller Ruby comp than we've had in in the longest time actually since probably 2005 I would
00:28:38.039
guess we've never been this small and there's a number of obvious reasons that are pretty exceptional right now that
00:28:44.580
cause that but like we we have a lot of very interested folks that are want to
00:28:49.919
sponsor and attend and come together and so that's kind of the easiest part is that that you all see the value in that
00:28:56.700
and you can't wait to come here so that that does make it a lot easier than maybe some other new conference would
00:29:02.580
have to deal with I think the the one of the hardest things that we've had to deal with recently is that we've had a
00:29:08.760
lot of turnover and the challenges of the pandemic that we've had to essentially reinvent ourselves and this
00:29:14.940
conference in some ways or at least revisit things that we have done or choices we've made then maybe we need to
00:29:21.899
change that maybe it was time to like reconsider some things and that's that's hard because we just don't know and
00:29:29.100
um you know hopefully we're getting it right yeah and I'm not um on that note please
00:29:34.919
tell us what you think about the conferences and and what you've enjoyed and what you didn't want there's a
00:29:40.860
there's a survey I'll be coming out later and we really really do value your opinions it's a gang it's it's your
00:29:46.440
conference so it's something that's that's really important but in terms of difficulties there's little things which
00:29:52.620
hopefully you don't see like name badges we arrived and the printing company who
00:29:58.380
we use for ages who we're going to print name badges decided that they just didn't want to do that and so it didn't
00:30:04.320
print them and didn't send them to us and so it's like ah we don't have any name badges or the extra box of t-shirts
00:30:11.039
which was left in a warehouse somewhere in the Northeast so there's small little things that we try and run around and
00:30:17.940
kind of fix so there's a a lot of stuff yeah I was gonna say that's um the one
00:30:24.480
of the things that makes conference organizing and running much easier for us is our incredible staff and mainly
00:30:31.440
Sean Tia here she is
00:30:46.919
uh we have a really good good time and that it's just an amazing event happens
00:30:52.620
she didn't realize she was walking into that I don't think
00:30:57.720
it's so so perfect um I'm Gonna Break The Rules a little bit even though I'm the moderator and
00:31:03.059
answer this one um which is like I think one of the big challenges is
00:31:09.240
I think everyone in this room realizes how special the Ruby Community is
00:31:14.580
um and how great it is to be a part of it but I think it can be hard to
00:31:20.399
break that down into like we've got 300 people at this conference 400 people
00:31:26.700
at this conference however many it is into like a small community that you can latch on to as maybe a person who's new
00:31:34.679
to it and we do a lot of things to try and ameliorate that the scholar guides
00:31:40.200
program is one great example um but I think
00:31:46.380
it's it's a hard problem to solve
00:31:51.960
and so next question is going to be
00:31:57.539
what would you like to see happening going into Ruby Central's future
00:32:05.720
from my point of view um doing more things and doing them more
00:32:11.880
sustainably so as an example for example with ruby gems
00:32:17.899
we have as mentioned previously the Ruby together money which comes in which is
00:32:23.159
fantastic but we've also had other grants that have come in to help support that so for
00:32:28.799
example we had the Ruby Shield Grant thanks to Shopify but we also just
00:32:34.200
received 190 000 Euros from The Sovereign trust fund
00:32:40.679
which is basically German government to actually put more support into rubygems
00:32:46.679
it's we're now seeing a lot more interest from not just companies but governments as well around supply chain
00:32:53.340
security and making sure these things happen if rubygems.org goes down
00:32:58.860
I mean personally for me it's like oh okay I guess I'll go off for a walk or
00:33:03.899
something but it can be a huge issue and now for the first time thanks to some of this we now actually have 24 7 on-call
00:33:10.919
coverage for ruby gems which is something that just didn't happen before it was just hoped that someone over the
00:33:16.740
weekend spotted that it had gone down and went and fixed it there is now page of things there is now coverage we are
00:33:21.899
paying people to look after our infrastructure and I I'm really Keen to see a a better way of being able to
00:33:29.279
support um not only the infrastructure but maintainers and authors of core gems and
00:33:35.100
making sure that we're able to do things in a way that isn't the the traditional XKCD thing of uh big tower of bricks
00:33:41.880
with a tiny block at the bottom written by someone in there basement in
00:33:47.460
Alaska or somewhere I think that it's it's Nebraska yeah so it I mean and it's
00:33:52.860
all true and we all know this right everyone in this room knows what these
00:33:58.140
huge massive technology Stacks are actually have underneath at the bottom and I think it's uh it's something I'm
00:34:06.179
quite excited in seeing how that can be developed to make sure that we actually try and do something there
00:34:12.780
yeah I mean there's a tremendous amount of things right like what would a scholar guides program that ran all year long look like what would
00:34:19.980
um you know more more support more Outreach uh internationally what would it look like um you know Marty mentioned
00:34:26.399
sort of regional conferences there used to be a lot of regional conferences and a lot of Ruby conferences all over the
00:34:31.740
world what would it what would it look like to think about a grant program that helped those or some way to help those a
00:34:37.980
lot of those went away um not because there was an interest but because it was so exhausting for organizers to plan those year after year
00:34:45.179
after year what would it look like for Ruby Central to be able to provide some support and that support you know could
00:34:52.020
happen in a whole variety of ways what would a grant program look like what
00:34:57.420
sorts of programs or things could we provide grants for that would help um you know the the community both you
00:35:03.720
know technically and non-technically Thrive so all of those things are things
00:35:08.940
that I hope we do more of in the future yeah I think um I've been thinking about
00:35:14.820
like continuing education and sort of the needs that exist out there that businesses and Engineers that would like
00:35:21.839
to see more opportunities there how do we help new members come in outside of
00:35:27.480
these events so like you know you know Ruby come from rails comp happen twice a year they happen in a place it's
00:35:33.060
expensive to travel to those places what would it look like for that to be something that happened throughout the
00:35:38.280
year in a more virtual or remote sort of friendly way I don't know but like you
00:35:44.160
know that those are things that that we've been thinking about and I think could make a fairly large impact if we
00:35:49.680
were to move forward on them I'm really excited about uh connecting
00:35:55.980
more with local communities especially you know um where the conferences are and
00:36:03.900
figuring out even more ways for that local Tech Community to really celebrate
00:36:09.839
their city and the things that they're doing there um just a shout out the you know rails
00:36:16.980
uh conf in Atlanta if anyone knows anyone I want to get connected to that Community
00:36:23.520
um so come and talk to me um but but also you know we've been talking a lot about
00:36:30.240
um doing some workshops uh before cfp training like helping our cfp pipeline
00:36:37.500
get even more flush with even more people and helping people really craft those cfps so that they feel like they
00:36:46.140
can they can compete and they can be a part of the process um doing uh some more like mentorship
00:36:52.619
programs mentorship training and speaker training is things that
00:36:58.440
we've talked about for new speakers and really just being at a place where we can support all of you and make these
00:37:06.540
conferences about the cities about you about what you're doing and celebrating
00:37:12.119
that is is I'm very excited and also I think for me
00:37:18.200
as a organizational development geek I am so stinking excited for the growth of
00:37:24.660
this organization and figuring out all the new pieces and how to help Ruby
00:37:30.780
Central just be a really stable place so that it has that really good we can
00:37:37.140
build on the foundation and see it really Thrive so that it can be a voice for all of you
00:37:45.300
and what can people in the community do
00:37:50.760
if they wanna get involved with Ruby Central how can
00:37:56.520
they help out
00:38:01.800
let's stick with email me to start with so it's Neil rubycentral.org
00:38:07.800
um if anyone is interested in doing anything let me know um I'm I'd be really interested to see
00:38:13.500
what sort of support you need or what you want to do if you have some great ideas then really that as as Chelsea mentioned
00:38:21.180
we're here for all of you um it's the question is what do you want us to be doing as an organization rather
00:38:27.720
than what we think we should be doing because I don't pretend that I have all
00:38:33.000
the answers I have some stuff and I've had a lot of a lot of experience with different organizations and with running
00:38:39.480
Community groups and I generally find that actually the best ideas come from the community themselves rather than
00:38:46.200
from anything that I can come up with so fill out your survey
00:38:52.200
because that will help us hear from you that's an easy way for us to kind of hear the the ins and outs and the things
00:38:59.579
maybe where the holes are but maybe even the things that are like this was my favorite part please don't take it away
00:39:05.760
um those are the kinds of things that we're uh that we're looking for um I'm one of the co-chairs for
00:39:13.020
um railsconf in Atlanta uh so if you're excited about that and want to talk to
00:39:18.359
me about that please come and talk to me um I'm happy to um you know listen and take volunteers
00:39:25.200
and hang out and see what we can do yeah I think the um we've been looking
00:39:31.500
at sort of developing more of a committee process to like working groups
00:39:36.660
that focus on certain aspects of what we do so for example if you're really interested in how we sort of maintain
00:39:43.140
our open source projects how we grow those uh if you want to get into event organizing aspects our guides and
00:39:49.560
Scholars Program you know there there are ways that you can contribute some of your time by getting involved if you're
00:39:56.280
curious about those I think you can reach out to Neil I think is a pretty good place to start and we can sort of
00:40:02.280
uh go from there okay and we're almost done so our last
00:40:08.640
question is going to be another submitted question thank you again for submitted questions uh it is we all know
00:40:16.020
how much the Ruby care uh Community loves karaoke what is your go-to karaoke
00:40:22.320
song
00:40:28.619
I can be obscure because I'm British it's great Robin mine I'll tell you what my mum's
00:40:35.820
favorite karaoke song is of of about a month ago so when I explained that I had got this
00:40:42.599
new job and I was going to work for Ruby there's the song by the Kaiser Chiefs called Ruby Ruby Ruby Ruby and so every
00:40:50.339
single time now she goes hey Neil how's your work at Ruby Ruby Ruby is that the thing thanks well thanks for that but
00:40:56.040
yeah
00:41:01.560
I think I didn't get this question ahead of time um sorry
00:41:07.160
uh I you know I think I prefer karaoke in a group and so I would go for more of
00:41:16.020
the like I don't know Queen songs The Bohemian rhapsodies that like everyone's gonna do
00:41:22.200
it with you so that you're not up there by yourself
00:41:28.680
um I also do not have a go-to song but it's probably something I don't know Britney Spears Spice Girls those were
00:41:34.500
like oh is good go-to's you can never go wrong there yeah I'm not a big karaoke guy so I
00:41:41.640
don't know if I have one but I I'll go with Chelsea's answer that I probably would do some sort of group singing or
00:41:48.540
uh like white queen or I don't know I mean the popular stuff I feel like this
00:41:55.200
is the feedback that we're gonna get that the Ruby Central Board needs to do more karaoke that
00:42:01.579
uh mine is do You Hear the People Sing from Les Miserables uh I also like
00:42:06.900
Suddenly Seymour from Little Shop of Horrors um I will often try to sing both parts
00:42:12.540
but it's better if someone will sing either of the parts with me
00:42:18.420
um love musicals uh and that is all for our panel thank
00:42:25.079
you very much to our panelists uh and thank you all for being here